Knights of Sidonia game?

Recently I watched the new Netflix Distributed Anime Knights of Sidonia, and let me tell you: it is incredible. From the first episode there is a sense of utter mortality that permeates the entire series. What I enjoy the most about the series is that it is clearly cut from one continuous story and is not in a picaresque/episodic format that so many shows fall into. Instead this series is one giant story with increasing stakes from show to show it was great. Yes it's based on a manga, but there are a lot of shows like that and they just ramble.

What is game-able about the show is that their spaceship's energy (Heigus particles) is used for everything they need to do. Fly out to that alien? Use some Heigus particles. Want to shoot a giant laser beam at that monstrosity tearing your friend apart? Use some Heigus particles. What's that? You're out of Heigus particles? Sorry, bro you're fucked.

I think it would be fun in a tabletop game set in space with giant robots to use just this one resource for everything. Tabletop RPGs like D&D are all about managing the consumption of resources, and this is where a lot of tension comes from. This would make for prime game moments of a player deciding whether to take one last shot at the enemy and risk being stranded in space or fly back to base and maybe have to deal with that enemy again later on.


Obviously this needs more work, but I'm not hosting any space games anytime soon so it can definitely wait.

What I'm Enjoying Right Now

HALT AND CATCH FIRE - To fill the void left by Mad Men on Sunday nights, AMC slotted in the new '80s computer programming drama Halt And Catch Fire which revolves around an enigmatic and brash tech entrepreneur Joe McMillan (Lee Pace, from The Hobbit, Pushing Daisies, The Fall) whose desire to build a computer to rival IBM sees him recruiting a punk rock klepto tech genius college student who dislikes wearing bras and a sad sack drunk married father of two whose flash of genius years before went unnoticed by everyone except Joe. The show is built around the two men whose life goals are diametrically opposite, yet the venn-diagram of their desires slightly overlaps when it comes to building the machine that they believe the world is waiting for. Scoot McNairy plays Gordon, the programmer who is struggling with a teetering marriage (Fun Fact: his wife is played by Kerry Bishe, who also played his wife in the Ben Affleck film Argo) and alcoholism while wasting away in a cubicle in the office of a tech firm. Joe belittles Gordon but quickly lets his intentions be known and recruits Gordon and Cameron, the rebellious young woman who struggles to trust the suits who want her skills. Joe is a mix of someone somewhere between Don Draper and The Wolf Of Wall Street. He can whip up a room into a froth with an improvised speech of stolen catchphrases and cliche sentiments but has the confidence and determination to walk away from any confrontation the winner. It's a nice little period piece to be a placeholder for a few months before Mad Men comes back.

COLD IN JULY - This film is a cold, black, dirty little piece noir. Joe R. Lansdale wrote the book about a man who shoots an unarmed burglar in his home one night in small-town Texas and struggles to cope with the aftermath. Soon, the dead mans father (Sam Shepard) shows up in town, fresh out of prison, looking for vengeance. Halfway through the film, the plot takes a turn and becomes something altogether different but tests Richard (Michael C. Hall) in unimaginable ways. Don Johnson shows up in the larger than life role of Jim Bob, a PI with a personality the size of Texas and Hall surprisingly keeps up with Johnson and Sam Shepard. His role as Dexter Morgan for almost a decade prepared him to play Richard, a man hiding secrets from his family and more capable of violence and vengeance than anyone would assume. All three men are forced to confront the darkness they know exists in the world and which resides within them and see if they make it out of the darkness alive.

WORLD CUP SOCCER - The World Cup, held every 4 years, is perhaps the most beloved sporting event in the world, even more than the Olympics. Soccer, still struggling to gain footing as a serious sport here in the United States, is the sport of choice for almost every other nation on Earth. The US Men's National Team, USMNT, is always a dark horse to make the tournament, let alone be considered a real threat to compete but this year, thanks to the presence of coach Jurgen Klinsman, a German who has both coached in and played & won a World Cup, the US have a decent chance of advancing into the later stages. The traditional powerhouse nations Spain, England, Italy and Portugal are all out or will be finished by week's end and heavy favorites Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands and Argentina are all awaiting opponents in the Round of 16. Worldwide soccer superstars (most players are members of multiple national, club and professional teams all around the world) like Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo, Robin Van Persie, Wayne Rooney, Mario Balotelli and our own Clint Dempsey all had a major impact on their teams performance, making this one of the most entertaining and exciting Cups ever. In addition to the action on the pitch, the brutal Brazilian heat and humidity has been a major topic as it wreaked havoc on many of the players, including just about everyone who has had to play in Manaus, in the middle of the Amazonian jungle, where the US had a heartbreaking draw with Portugal on Sunday after giving up a goal on the final touch of the game, where for the first time in history, the match was paused for a water break. There were allegations of match fixing, favoritism among the referees, flopping (all standard for the sport of soccer) and even an incident involving Luis Suarez of Uruguay, who bit an Italian player on the shoulder today (the third time he's bit an opponent during a match). All this and we're not even through the opening round of the tournament. The NBA and NHL Finals were just a few weeks ago but those games pale in comparison to even the most middling matches of this tournament. The levels of athleticism and the sheer explosiveness and excitement that some of these players can display at any given moment is unmatched by almost anything else out there and anyone who isn't watching out of some misplaced desire to be opposed to what everyone else is watching and talking about is really missing out on some world class entertainment and drama. If anyone is reading this before Thursday the 26th, do yourself a favor, go to a sports bar on Thursday morning, or somewhere public with people watching the US versus Germany game to determine first place in their group and let yourself get washed away in the enthusiasm and excitement that comes with watching this sport on the biggest stage the world has to offer.

Lets Go To Fargo

After the conclusion of yet another once-in-a-generation show, it's time to debate with myself about where it belongs in the pantheon of great contemporary shows. Fargo, in all its snowy, bloody glory, just finished its first season (or first incarnation, depending on whether it holds with the anthology format that seems to be the new TV model) and with it, the inevitable comparisons to True Detective, the most recent Is It Great? show.

First off, we have to discuss this new model of the limited series, miniseries, anthology series (whatever you like to call it) that has started to show up on television. American Horror Story, a show I dislike for too many reasons to discuss here, has, admittedly, been doing that model very well the last three years, bringing back some of the same actors each year but in a new locale and with a new theme, while keeping with the general tone of something creepy and unsettling. AHS was definitely a model for what FX and Noah Hawley want to do with Fargo. This season was different than the movie and the (possible) next season will be different yet again, presumably while keeping the main ingredients of snow, murder and dark comedy. But the most important thing that an 8 or 10 (or even 3, 4 or 6 as per usual in the UK) episode season brings with it is the ability for the show to attract big names. AHS annually gets a large, talented cast and Fargo has the deepest bench in television right now, including Billy Bob Thornton who will surely be a contender come awards season. True Detective became the behemoth it was because of the above-the-title names of Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. People who may not have normally watched a gritty detective drama tuned in to bear witness to the McConaissance and expectations perhaps became too high, even if people's expectations of what the show was going to be was never what Nic Pizzolatto was going to do with it. This format can really only work with the type of show that has a central mystery to solve; a workplace comedy wouldn't be able to muster up enough intrigue after 8 episodes to warrant the closed ending, never to be explored again. Sitcoms need time to flesh out their characters & relationships and procedurals live and die on their formula, episode after episode, year after year.

The second point I want to discuss is the current state of quality television, which is in a very good place. Breaking Bad finished recently and Mad Men is technically halfway through its final season, and as previously noted, True Detective has a brief, successful run a few months ago and the ever present Game Of Thrones just finished its fourth season this week. Then, there are the shows like Sherlock and Orphan Black and The Americans which are critical darlings and extremely well-made but still manage to stay under the general public's radar. Game Of Thrones is the only show that has one foot firmly in the high concept genre camp and one in the quality, Sunday night must watch, Monday morning must discuss camp. The Walking Dead is a show that mostly applies to the former while Mad Men is firmly in the latter. Ratings usually come from the former while accolades come from the latter. Breaking Bad was the program that transcended both labels and became a must-watch for the way it satisfied the gangster bloodlust of its casual fans and the attention to detail in the writing, directing and acting that had critics salivating every Sunday night on Twitter. The reasons I don't like Game Of Thrones are mostly the same reasons I don't like The Walking Dead, although Walking Dead is more frequently enjoyable than GoT, which is a slog through middle earth following the attempted power grabs of loathsome, incestuous, stubbornly prideful characters. Game Of Thrones is like all the most boring parts of the Tolkein universe made into a television show that looks really beautiful. The problem with both shows is that there's nobody to root for, the threat of your favorite character being killed off at any time doesn't create enjoyable suspense, it creates a sense of time wasted investing time and emotion in their journey. Perhaps people like the escapism and exoticism that comes with shows like these, watching people in foreign situations so far from their own lives. A man shooting a crossbow into a zombie or a knight raging in medieval battle is interesting because it's not something they have to compare to their own life, it has a certain "epic" or "badass" quality to it. The most talked about, highest rated episodes of these shows are the ones with the biggest shootouts or the most brutal battle scenes. In contrast, Mad Men and Matthew Weiner are able to convey a lifetime's worth of emotion and pain in a scene with no dialogue in an episode that has fewer viewers than the evening news. If Mad Men were on any other network, it's ratings alone would've been the nail in the coffin years ago, but it's hard for AMC to deny the armload of Emmy's it wins every year. Don't get me wrong, I love genre fiction, television and movies, but I'm just tired of the best shows on television getting canceled because they don't have a high enough shock value. I have faith that the powers that be will see that smaller scale shows like Masters Of Sex and The Americans can be big on substance and draw a crowd with discerning tastes for quality television.

So the point of this piece was to discuss Fargo, a show that is severely underrated, underappreciated and underwatched. I can't find a single person discuss the show with because nobody has seen it in it's entirety, if at all. Fargo is a show that shouldn't really be as good as it is. On paper, an adaptation of one of the most beloved & successful Coen Brothers films into a 10 episode series by the guy who created My Generation does not look promising. However, Hawley dispensed with the flesh & blood characters of the film and instead, decided to explore perhaps the most important character; the snowy landscape of the upper Midwest. The dark humor, the unforgiving weather and the brutality the region's unimposing people are capable of are all present in the show, as they were in the Coen's version, but the most striking creation of Hawley and the writers of the show is the creation of the character Lorne Malvo. Billy Bob Thornton has not been this lively and entertaining on screen in years as Malvo, who is the very definition of evil, the wolf at the door of the good, humble folks of Bemidji. Malvo, at one point, decides to enact the biblical plagues on, of all people, the man he is working for, just for the pleasure of it, just to see what happens. Watching the series as it goes on, one can't help but wonder if Malvo is something beyond human, pure evil come to earth in the form of a man, sent here to wreak havoc and corrupt good people and spoil the pristine snowy landscape. He makes the sniveling, petty, cowardly King Joffrey look like an innocent little blonde kitten on the throne of swords. Malvo would have a field day with Joffrey, he'd bring him to his knees and make him beg for his life and then slit his throat with a smirk on his face. Malvo's body count in these ten episodes is astounding. The cast is full of fantastic characters whose humble civility is tested by the changing norms of society. The police captain at one point laments the disappearance of the time when folks used to shovel each others drives instead of having to watch over their shoulders. It's a similar sentiment that lingers in, among other places, the Coen's No Country For Old Men, with Tommy Lee Jones as the sheriff who is struggling to keep order in his Texas border town as the presence of the drug wars start to creep in. Malvo is definitely a chip of the same block as Anton Chigurh, a man who lives to inflict chaos and pain and lose no sleep over it.

Another notable thing about the show is the presence of a second villain, who, played by Martin Freeman, is remarkably receptive to Malvo's influence. His Lester Nygaard is a man with a thin layer of civility that is quickly broken through at the arrival of Malvo and goes forward with no worry as to what kind of man he has become. The final sequence at the end of the penultimate episode is so absolutely tragic, so pitch black evil and devastating as we watch one of the most innocent characters in the show fall prey to the two headed wolf, that it's almost impossible to watch. It's more shocking than the scene where we find out Walter White poisoned Jesse's girlfriend's son. These shows of late have been great at providing conflicted antiheroes somewhere in the gray area between good and bad, and at a certain point, it seems that Lester will redeem himself but that notion is quickly and utterly extinguished. Through it all, Fargo was able to balance the brutality and bloodshed with the humor that you would expect from a Coen Brothers property and with a cast of comedic veterans like Freeman, Key & Peele, Bob Odenkirk, Oliver Platt and even Thornton whose desire to inflict a trail of chaos wherever he goes is frequently quite humorous. His deadpan delivery and insistence on talking his way out of every imaginable situation provides a lot of unexpected humor. It's a show that was made with the intention of being different and working outside the norms of cable television. Ratings weren't off the charts but it is definitely a success for the network and Hawley can write his own ticket for whatever he wishes to do in the future, whether it be Fargo-adjacent or not. There are a few characters begging for an extended backstory to be explored, most notably Keith Carradine as an ex-State Policeman whose own history with a wolf at his door would make for fantastic television, however, it doesn't sound like Hawley wants to go back to Fargo, at least not right away, since he just finished post-production on the series two weeks before the final episode aired. I'm sure he's on vacation, perhaps somewhere warm & sunny, plotting his next project that FX will undoubtedly write him a blank check for the privelege to air.

The Mysterious Matter Of Finding A Murderer

I started reading the book to the left THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL OF ALL: SEARCHING FOR MY FATHER...AND FINDING THE ZODIAC KILLER. Now, the fact that this man, Gary Stewart, thinks his father was the Zodiac Killer, the infamous murderer of anywhere from 5 to 37 people in California in the sixties & seventies, is nothing new. In fact, he's not the only guy to write a book claiming to have irrefutable proof that his father is the Zodiac Killer. Steve Hodel, in his book MOST EVIL: AVENGER, ZODIAC AND THE FURTHER SERIAL MURDERS OF DR. GEORGE HILL HODEL claims that his father is not only the Zodiac Killer, but also the Black Dahlia Avenger, the murderer of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles in 1947 as well as the Lipstick Killer, who was responsible for three deaths in 1946 in Chicago,* among others. Jeff Mudgett, a descendant of Herman Webster Mudgett, wrote a biography of Herman Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, America's first serial killer, who possibly killed upwards of 200 people in the early 1890's in Chicago, in which he claims that Holmes was also Jack The Ripper, the infamous unidentified murderer of prostitutes in London in 1888**. This phenomenon is nothing new, and whenever a tabloid murder makes news, it brings the crazies out of the woodwork. There's a scene in the David Fincher film of Robert Graysmith's book ZODIAC where the police are inundated with calls where people are willing to confess to any and every unsolved crime in history. A woman named Deborah Perez also claimed that her father was Zodiac but a former claim on her part that she was the illegitimate daughter of JFK made her Zodiac claim null & void. A quick Wikipedia search will show a whole host of individuals who believe that they have the one and only answer to the question of Zodiac's identity. Authorities are always reluctant to set up hotlines for the public to call in and report tips because there are so many bogus and ridiculous claims that get called in when they're really hoping for something useful. Sometimes, those people actually get books published detailing those theories.

Gary Stewart was abandoned by his biological father as a baby and lived his entire life not knowing his biological parents. As an adult, his birth mother got in touch with his adoptive parents and told them she'd like to meet him. His mother caught him up on all the family history and in his quest to learn more about his father, he begins to realize that the man may have been a murderer. He also discusses how the San Francisco Chronicle writer Paul Avery^ seemed to have a vendetta against him, which would explain why Zodiac eventually sent threatening letters & cards to Avery. Stewart describes a man who was handsome and charming, capable of seducing women and adept at hiding his shady past and problems with women that may have caused him to seek out young happy couples to kill as Zodiac. He bears a passing resemblance to a vague description of Zodiac that one of his only survivors was able to relay to the police. A description that would probably fit a thousand men in any given city at any given time.

  

Hodel provided a photo of his father that bears resemblance to yet another Zodiac wanted poster.

Still other descriptions of Zodiac supplied by survivors are of a slightly larger man, a description that fits Arthur Leigh Allen, while still keeping with the theme of a man in dark framed glasses and a crew cut.

I'm still making my way through the book but was compelled to stop and put some thoughts down here. What I'm wondering is if doing this research and bending your findings to fit into a narrative that you want, or need to come out of it is cathartic. I didn't have a troubled childhood and I have no issues with my father or his character so I guess I wouldn't know what it's like to have to piece together my family's potentially nefarious history 40 years after the fact. Steve Hodel was an LAPD detective so tracking down murderers and criminals and piecing together facts, evidence and supposition to solve crimes is in his blood. It's not so far fetched that he would look at his father for crimes that were so close to him, both physically as a California resident and as a detective. I think when someone goes to write a story about something, they find facts to prop-up their theory and conveniently dismiss others so as to not muddy the waters. A quick look at the index of Stewart's book makes no mention of Arthur Leigh Allen, who, in my opinion,^^ is the Zodiac Killer. I believe Graysmith, in his two books, puts forth the most compelling argument for any individual to be Zodiac. Since the crimes were so famous and captured the public's imagination so intensely, coupled with the fact that they were never solved makes them particularly ripe for the picking for people to write about and espouse theories upon. I'm by no means an expert but I am fascinated with the crimes and particularly more-so as a Bay Area resident now. There have been dozens of books and films that have attempted to solve the crime and perhaps link it to other notorious crimes of the era like Hodel has done. It's big business because it's such a recognizable name, even if most of the work is reheated junk. I haven't read them all and I don't need to but I'll probably keep checking up on them every once in a while, even though I believe nobody will ever officially be named the Zodiac Killer. Arthur Leigh Allen died many years ago but has been the most closely linked suspect, thanks to the advancement of crime scene technology, to the crimes^^^. So if Stewart believes his father was Zodiac, it stands to reason that he would not acknowledge Allen as a reasonable suspect, or anyone else for that matter. I think Graysmith, because other than being in the building that some of the Zodiac letters arrived at, he has no connection to the crimes and is therefore in the best position to make a thorough and compelling investigation into the case. He didn't have the public pressure that the police department had and he doesn't have the personal connection that Stewart and Hodel believe they have to the case and can therefore objectively look at all the facts and come up with a reasonable narrative. Graysmith was a cartoonist but made a nice career for himself as a true crime writer and perhaps used some of what he learned from working with Avery and the SFPD detective Dave Toschi in the early days of the killings to become a legitimate writer and detective in his own right.

The crimes themselves hold much more interest for me than belittling these people for whom Zodiac is much closer to than myself. I admire their detective spirit and determination to take a stab (no pun intended) at finding out who Zodiac is. But it doesn't mean they're right, it just means that they were able to get a book deal.

--------------------------------

*William George Heirens was convicted of the Lipstick Killer murders and spent 65 years in prison. While everyone and his brother has their own theories, both the Zodiac killings and the Elizabeth Short murder have yet to be officially solved.
**He wasn't.
^Paul Avery was a troubled writer who was played by Robert Downey, Jr. in the Fincher film.
^^And the opinion of Graysmith and perhaps Fincher and James Vanderbilt, the writers of the 2007 film.
^^^There are many more reasons to believe that Allen is Zodiac, mostly involving the series of letters purportedly written by Zodiac. DNA, handwriting analysis, and study of the content and language in the letters points to Allen more than anyone else. The timeline of the crimes match up very well with Allen's life and behavior, including the fact that he lived very close to one of the victims and the span of time that Zodiac letters ceased to show up coincided exactly with the time Allen spent in prison. Circumstantial, sure, but hard to ignore.

"Can I Bless the Yeast?"

So Lee,

Here's what you've been missing D&D wise.

After you left Jordan came back and has been playing Vogen, the Elf Librarian (Magic-User) and also Libby, the chick that gave you the crud. Vogen is in love with Libby. It's complicated.

So the group has been travelling around the same countryside near where you as Ranger the Ranger got into a fight with your future-son and time travelled mid-wrestle. After checking in on Timmy's grandmother, the crippled bus boy at the Crooked House tavern, and burning down her house after picking up a demonic spell book and magic rapier that hits anything on a 14, but NOT the target on a 16 or 17; fighting off hellhounds while one dragged Arthur's soul into the inferno; losing said demonic to spellbook to a mysterious figure that's definitely Timmy; sneaking into a giant ant hill and stealing an ant egg for a wizard-scholar who most likely is trying to create an ant-monster army; breaking the neck of a Giant Roc that had 36 HD (!) and meeting Arthur's many new characters they decided to get the hell out of Dodge.

This entailed looking for a job in the capital and hitching a ride as... security? aboard House Cannith's new airship that uses a new engine to power it made from the schematics you guys spent so long collecting. Remember all that fighting Warforged terrorists and going into the jungle with Miss Patsy and Zinzelpants and braving the zombies and weirdo skeletons in the Desolation? Yeah that all turned into this giant airship that was being used as a peace ship to make treaties with the newly discovered southern continent and their Empire. Emphasis on the past tense in that sentence.

While you were doing all those dangerous as fuck fetch quests remember your patron, Elayne? Yeah she's here too running around telling people what to do and helping to look for the vampire which is good because she totally did all the work when you guys killed the Lord of Blades. Well, her and Matt's shotgun.

Oh I forgot to mention the maybe genocide that's happening, but whatever that's not important right now.

So the party, newly named Random Task Force, is on board the ship not five minutes when Warforged terrorists, shouting something about the Lord of Blades, attempt to take control! (Imagine in the 5th element when Bruce Willis walks onto the bridge and just one-shots that guy completely winning in one quick motion). After a pretty terrible rescue attempt of the engineers being held hostage in the engine room, the party had won! Except all the engineers died and Libby fell on a smoke bomb after being sent in (naked) as a distraction.

So she's rushed to the infirmary and the rest of the group splits into 2 (!) to search the rest of the decks for any trouble telling the ship's Captain to have everyone on board go to the top deck. LOL. Naturally the emissaries/ambassadors all decide to help cause they think they're tough shit, but they all end up dead. Right at the moment the party gets there to see them murdered by a mysterious black cloud of course. Please keep in mind these guys are all badasses. And they're dead.

The final confrontation happens in the hold of the ship fighting on and around crates.

Them:  "What's in these crates?"
Me: "/shrug"
Them: "How do you not know what's in the crates?"

How I should've responded was having bad guys burst out at that moment and then looked them dead in the eyes and said "Happy?"

Just as the guy I was trying to frame (successfully?) as the vampire is murdered by said mysterious black cloud in front of their eyes the cloud takes humanoid form and slowly dissolves away into...

Everyone: "Is it Elayne? It's Elayne isn't it?"
Me: "...Yeah, totally. It is definitely Elayne. Was gonna be the whole time..." [deletes notes]

Turns out you can't hit a vampire unless using a holy weapon, or silver which the corpses around them have. Damian's golden, holy mace does a shitload of damage to her and Jordan's magic rapier keeps accidentally hitting Amanda. Things aren't looking good. Mostly because vampires feed on people's life force, and in D&D what is the most precious form of life force?

Levels. Yep she was eating their levels! Just by touching them! Bummer!
Also she raised zombies and at one point mind controlled Jordan into attacking everybody while she hid in the rafters and regenerated life.

Yeah turns out vampires are bad news.
This is how we left it last week.

THIS WEEK SHIT GOT REAL.

The Mage Ambassador from Aundair and her cronies came down and cast a battlefield spell that imbued everyone with fighting prowess. It was pretty awesome. Golden light enveloping their muscles and shit, I was proud of myself.

Jordan couldn't come and he let the others play as him (smh), but Arthur rolled two crits as Vogen and did decent damage to the vampire and her zombie minions. Damian did some crazy holy mace damage again and things were looking good. The tide had turned!

So Vamp-Elayne decides to bail. Blasts a hole in the side of the ship and grows wings. Arthur intercepts her with his two characters Vogen and Peaches while Damian casts Yeast on the ship hole and Amanda blesses it.

So now there's a living patch of holy yeast on the escape route. Was it going to do anything? Maybe burn a little? Cause a holy-unholy infection? Who knows, because while standing in front of the hole they kept shooting arrows at Vamp-Elayne who proceeded to pick up Vogen and use him as an Elf shield.

You see where this is going? Yeah she threw Vogen's corpse at the three of them in front of the hole and they all dangled "thousands of miles" in the air.

Except Vogen. Vogen tumbled like a rag doll towards the ground. But he wasn't completely useless yet.

JaNice, Amanda's character was on the bottom of this barrel of monkeys strand and she failed miserably to try and climb up, slipping and falling after Vogen. But this is where things get fucking awesome.

Have you seen that movie with Wesley Snipes and the parachuters? Drop Zone? Fuck it, any movie where someone falls out of a plane and speeds up to catch up to somebody? JaNice does that and grabs onto Vogen's body and uses him to cushion her fall.

AND IT FUCKING WORKS.

It was amazing man, I wish everyone in the world could've seen it.

Meanwhile, Peaches and Ganthet are still fucked, hanging from the ship, but they miraculously manage to climb up just as the Aundair Ambassador launches a fireball and incinerates the Vampire. Promptly, Libby finally shows up with a "life boat" and they get the fuck off the ship just in time to see it ripped to shreds in a massive explosion and crash into Sharn (where this all started) levelling a third of the city.

They find JaNice a few days later in an emergency shelter set up for the victims of the crash and she is surrounded by a group of mid-tier aristocrats who worship her as their new queen. And a puppy.

Epic success! ... ?

With love,
Christopher.

Vigilantes on the Fringe

So Nate and Dave (noisms from one of my favorite blogs, monsters and manuals) started a podcast called "A Gaming Podcast About Nothing" which is pretty good if you like listening to a couple of British dudes speak about games they've played and people they've played it with in the many years they've known each other. Which I do. During the second (first?) episode they were talking about setting Dogs in the Vineyard out in the Oort Cloud which blew my mind because I've wanted to play a space cowboy/bounty hunter game forever and the Oort Cloud is a much more interesting frontier space than the typical Mars. The whole Mars setting was the reason I never got anywhere with it because it reminded me a little too much of Cowboy Bebop and as a superfan of something you have to be aware of when it is over-influencing your creativity.

The second reason this is a revelation to me is that Dogs in the Vineyard is set up to kind of deal with the murder hobo-ness of D&D that all groups sort of devolve into without removing anything that makes that fun. DitV characters are lawkeepers/problem solvers created by the Mormon higher ups to travel from town to town fixing things that need to be fixed. Each town I've seen is set up with multiple things in separate categories that are off and basically fodder for a group to latch onto and set about fucking with in their own special way. Your existence is purposeful and cataclysmic and above all known to everyone. How the NPCs react differs of course, but still I'm kind of #intoit. I don't know anything about the mechanics, but the set up is enough to set my brain on fire!

What I'm Enjoying Right Now: Lightning Round

UNDER THE SKIN - The best way to experience Under The Skin, if you haven't experienced it yet, is to know absolutely nothing about it. Nothing at all. Don't Google the plot, however miniscule it may be, don't watch the trailer, don't read the book, don't let anyone tell you about it. Just watch it while it's still on the big screen, in a big, quiet, dark auditorium because it's a big, quiet, dark film and your experience will be heightened for doing so. Some people in the group I saw it with walked out, another said it made her nauseous and gave her nightmares, another just simply stated he didn't know what he just watched. It's a really interesting film that challenges a lot of preconceived notions about filmmaking and the human condition, just to name a few.

ATMOSPHERE "Southsiders" - I'm not generally a fan of hip-hop and it's been a long time since I've listened to Slug & the gang but I really like this album. It's pretty mellow, it's not quite as angry as some of the earlier stuff, the backing tracks are more chill and free-flowing, layering well behind Slug as he tells stories about life and growing up in the titular southside of Minneapolis. Perhaps being a family man has sanded down the rough edges but he's still got some stuff he needs to get off his chest.

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE - Jim Jarmusch is the epitome of cool, eclipsing even Nick Cave and David Lynch, I think. Leave it up to him to take a tired genre and make it look effortlessly cool while paying homage to its roots in literature and pop culture without any of the worn out tropes that have plagued the vampire story in the last decade. Hiddleston and Swinton are perfect as ancient vampires pondering their existence and struggling to coexist in a world that the main species is destroying. Detroit is a stand-in for the wasteland that humans have made of the world and the lovers pass their days sneaking into hospitals to steal blood and listening to rock music and wondering when humans will taint their surroundings and their bodies to the point when they become toxic.

KCRW's PRESS PLAY - Press Play is a daily news podcast on KCRW hosted by Madeleine Brand and it provides me with a small link to my Southern California roots. Brand and guests discuss events happening in LA and issues that are impacting Angelinos and Californians as a whole, from the drought to the Clippers fiasco to the exodus of auto manufacturers to the week's films. I feel smarter just for listening and it's my way of keeping up on some of the important news of the day because I'm admittedly not really a news junkie and wouldn't know what's going on unless it jumped up and bit me. I've also been listening to The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell (the recent Dan Harmon episode is really good) and The Business on KCRW.

RICHARD STARK'S PARKER by Darwyn Cooke - I've praised the Parker novels before and I absolutely love these adaptations of the Parker series by Darwyn Cooke who captures the brutality and coldness of the '60s criminal underworld that Parker exists in. Start with The Hunter, the first Parker book but check out The Score where Parker leads a team of thieves who are planning to rob an entire town in a single night.